


A Feather

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Galentine's Day, Lawyer Betty Cooper, Valentine's Day, Writer Jughead Jones, b and v friendship, mention of varchie, smut about writing smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29399604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: The title comes from this quotation from Isabella Allende"Erotica is using a feather; pornography is using the whole chicken."This is a Valentines Day story about erotica, sex and love.  Betty is a lawyer who has her life sorted, good friends, a successful career, no strings sex when she wants it.  So why is she flustered and confused by the motorcycle messenger with the sexy elbows?  When they meet in a different, sexier context she can't avoid the issue any longer.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 47
Kudos: 103





	A Feather

**Author's Note:**

> The band I always recommend (The Mountain Goats) isn’t all that big on unambiguous songs about love and sex but there's one called 'I’ve Got The Sex,' so here's a little of that...
> 
> And you reached out your hand to me  
> It was good to feel your hand in mine  
> It was good to know you felt the chill too  
> I scooped up a palm full of strawberry pulp  
> And smeared it all over you  
> The wild strawberries drove me on, as I lapped them up off of your skin  
> And I could feel your basal body temperature rise as the cold came in  
> Hey hey

“Hey Betty,” Kevin yelled from his desk, his professional manner still leaving something to be desired. ”Bike guy’s here. Is it done?”

“Almost there. Just a sec,” she called back, running her eye over the figures for the last time as she pulled the elastic from her hair and ruffled her fingers through the waves, hoping the effect would be sexy rather than unkempt but, given she’d been at her desk all night, alluring was quite a stretch. At least she’d had the foresight to brush her teeth in the bathroom after the midnight al desko shawarma.

She pressed _print _and moved over to the machine, craning a little to see if she could spot the motorcycle messenger they used for longer distance document deliveries as he waited outside the office. “Sorry about this,” she heard Kevin say. “They changed the financials last minute so she had to pull an all nighter to redraft it.” She was going to have to talk to their receptionist about confidentiality again, hers and the client’s. He continued, “We wouldn’t want to risk our boy’s private island when this marriage goes the way of all the others.”__

__“Kevin!” She yelled a remonstrance, and he glanced back at her and shrugged. He was incorrigible but his status as one of her best friends made it pretty much impossible to fire him and he knew it. From her position she could see an elbow, clad in black leather and the toe of one boot. It was enough to set her heart racing like a syringe of adrenaline. How could his elbow have sex appeal? She unfastened the top button on her blouse, shook her head and refastened it and then, irritated by her own vacillation, undid two._ _

__If she stood on tiptoe with her head at an uncomfortable angle she realised she could see his reflection in one of the plate glass windows. As she watched, he took off his bike helmet and hooked it onto the crook of the sexy elbow. He reached up and ran his fingers through the waves of his dark hair and she felt her pulse thrum in her neck and a blush creep over her chest. The final page of the document dropped into the tray and she thrust the two copies into a string and washer envelope and twisted the tie to fasten it. She grabbed her jacket and breezed past Kevin. “Here we are, one prenup, ready to break a sentimental young girl’s heart. Kev, I’m going to dash out for coffee. Hold the fort, will you?”_ _

__“Hey, I can go get coffee for you Betty. What do you want?” Kev said, standing and reaching for his coat._ _

__“No, don’t worry about it. I need a breath of fresh air anyway. Relax. Back in ten... fifteen. Soy mocha, right?”_ _

__Kevin nodded and turned his attention to a flashing light on the switchboard and Betty looked up at bike guy. “I’ll walk you out,” she said with a smile._ _

__Five minutes later she had him pressed back against the shelves of legal pads and highlighter pens, her hands running over his belly under his t-shirt as he sucked hard where her neck met her shoulder. She moaned, needing to make him stop because she could hardly return from the coffee run with a fresh hickey but it was simply beyond her power to push him away. His fingers were grabbing the hem of her skirt and lifting it as he ran his hand up her leg, nudging against her with his hip to push his thigh between her legs and she knew from the way a voice somewhere in her head was moaning “Yes, oh yes,” that if she didn’t immediately find some moral courage she’d be lying amongst the toner cartridges being ravished by the bike guy in about ninety seconds. She summoned her last shreds of self control and said “Jones…Jones. We have to stop. We can’t...not here.” It took him a second but he looked into her eyes and she watched as he pushed back the lust with an effort of will that she recognised._ _

__He flattened down her skirt and patted her leg. “Sorry. Carried away. Come on a date with me. You say where and when.”_ _

__“I’ve told you many times, I don’t date. Come over to my place and we’ll have meaningless sex.”_ _

__“And I told you, I don’t do meaningless sex, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary.”_ _

__“Still an impasse then. I have to get back to work. I liked this though.”_ _

__“You’d better get coffee first or your staff are going to wonder where you’ve been to get all flushed and disarranged. If a couple minutes in the stationery closet can get you this hot and bothered imagine how it’d be to spend an evening with me in a restaurant," he leaned in, his breath hot against her ear, "my fingers on your knee, rubbing little circles against your skin, watching as you blush, increasing the pressure just a little, a flick…” He ran his tongue over his lips and she knew he wasn’t talking about her knee anymore so she shoved his shoulder and opened the door, looking back to see if he was coming with her._ _

__“I’m just gonna chill here for a second. You go on,” he said with a rueful grin. She didn’t mean to glance down, she just couldn’t help herself. She blushed, gasped in a breath and then sighed as she headed out to buy coffee that she didn’t even want._ _

__As she waited in line she found herself wondering what it would be like to go to a restaurant with the hot bike guy. She didn’t date because she didn’t see the point. Sure sex was pleasant, even almost-sex in the stock room, but that was the lure that biology used to trap you. One day you looked around and found yourself barefoot and pregnant, cooking meatloaf for some guy in a stained vest while he yelled obscenities at a football game and farted freely. No thanks. She had a pleasant, fragrant and well ordered home filled with books and art, she had disposable income, she had good friends and she had recreational sex when she wanted it, sometimes alone and sometimes with a friend. It was an excellent and fulfilling life. She had no need of Jones to pay for her dinners, she had no need of him to unload the dishwasher or change a tyre on her car, she had no need of his strong arms to hold her at night, she had no need of him, period._ _

__The working week passed smoothly enough. Prenups weren’t the most thrilling area of law but she was good at it, unsentimental and clear sighted. She and her two colleagues had started their own firm before any of them were thirty and they were building a reputation for unfussy, reasonably priced competency which allowed them to do the pro bono work on tenancies and employment disputes that they all felt was their real mission. She ate her lunch in the park opposite the office on dry days and read A Promised Land on the subway. When she noticed that she had begun to look up every time a bike messenger walked up to Kevin’s reception it unsettled her. She moved her desk so her view was blocked by the wall, a physical metaphor for the barrier she was maintaining. When feeling threatened, build a wall, even if the real threat is inside, not out there at all.__

____

____

__On Friday she went for drinks with Veronica, who was climbing the greasy pole in corporate finance, a woman in a man’s world just like Betty and her colleagues at Cowper, Cooper and Campbell. V had been on a date with a musician and was eager to report back to her BFF. When she was through extolling the virtues of pretty, dumb, enthusiastic men she asked Betty about her romantic escapades and Betty, three cosmopolitans to the good, told her that she’d almost had sex with a motorcycle courier in the supply closet on her coffee break. “He’s unbelievably attractive V. I don’t know exactly what it is, the way he moves or the leather maybe. But he wants to date, in fact he insists on it. How come I had to develop some kind of erotomania for the only prudish, strait-laced guy left on the island of Manhattan?”_ _

__“If he was trying to sex you on the copier paper maybe he’s not such a prude Betty. It’s just a date. You could go for dinner and have your way with him and then not call him. The worm turns.”_ _

__“No, I mean — if he was a player maybe — but there’s something kind of soft and vulnerable about him. He’s a romantic. He turns down hookups in favour of dinner dates for God’s sake. I just need to get over it. Maybe I should just swipe right randomly with someone tomorrow, get it out of my system.”_ _

__V looked horrified at the suggestion and Betty bridled, “Oh because you and the musician kept it PG13, I suppose.”_ _

__“But not tomorrow B. Hookups are banned tomorrow, it’s strictly Galentine's festivities this weekend.”_ _

__She’d completely forgotten the date. She had never liked the rituals and rigmarole associated with Valentine's Day. In school there had been complicated rules, first about having to give a chocolate and a little folded paper heart to all one’s classmates with something kind written inside even though the popular kids had literally just finished name calling and ostracising the geeky or aesthetically challenged. In high school girls collected flowers and stuffed animals like serial killers collected victims' eyeballs or underwear. It had always made her nauseous and she had refused every stuffed panda and gerbera daisy that had ever been offered to her. She’d been ignoring the pink and red shop window displays for weeks but now the date had caught up to her and the only way out was through. She and V had a standing date for the 14th, sisters before misters always. “Fine, whatever. Can we just get ice cream and watch hot Regency guys get naked on Netflix?”_ _

__“No. I actually have the best plan. It’s a surprise but I promise it will be both entertaining and educational. The musician suggested it as a matter of fact.”_ _

__The following evening Betty endured a subway ride that felt more like a carnival love train, gooey eyed couples holding hands and exchanging soft kisses. She consoled herself with the thought that tomorrow they’d all be back to furious arguments about whose turn it was to clean the kitty litter tray and sleeping back to back. She hurried up the steps through an arctic wind tunnel to emerge from 8th Street Station in Greenwich Village. She followed the map on her phone to arrive at the book shop just as Veronica emanated from a sleek black town car in a cloud of Allure Sensuelle. “Oh Bettykins you look positively chilled. You should have said something, I could easily have picked you up. Sorry darling. It didn’t cross my mind that you’d walk or whatever.”_ _

__“It’s okay V. It would have been miles out of your way and we’d still have been sitting in traffic on the bridge anyway. Now, what are we here for?”_ _

__“It’s a writing class B. Isn’t that perfect?”_ _

__Betty stared at her friend for moment, V had never shown the slightest interest in writing. She’d read the same assigned high school fiction that was their common heritage, Catcher in The Rye, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mocking Bird, but beyond that she had not ventured. Her nightstand was tenanted entirely by Dale Carnegie, Sun Tzu and Sheryl Sandberg. She was pretty sure she’d once seen her guiltily sliding The Art of The Deal out of sight. “Why?” Betty muttered as her friend swept her past a sandwich board with a chalked notice that read “Galentine’s Day Writing Seminar.”_ _

__‘Why?’ suddenly became much clearer once they were inside. A large banner was hung from the ceiling that read “Writing erotica for pleasure and profit,” and Betty’s stomach dropped. She was a sexually confident woman in a liberal and accepting city but she had no intention of parading her kinks and foibles, in writing no less, for a randomly selected group of unattached women on Valentine's evening. She gave V a death stare but her friend simply giggled and clutched her arm. “Such fun!” she trilled and pulled Betty forward._ _

__On each table there were bottles of water and an acceptable rosé, as well as chips and breadsticks alongside sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks with pretty covers. Whoever organised this knew their target demo. Veronica selected a table and Betty skulked to a seat next to her, the only thing deterring her from the trek back to the subway being the fact that she still hadn’t regained the feeling in her fingers and toes. She’d drink a glass or two of wine, shamelessly consume carbs and refuse to write a word but keep the notebook. At least she’d be warm. She could go back to V’s in the town car and go home in the morning in relative comfort. It wouldn’t be so bad._ _

__Then, suddenly, things became very bad indeed. Catastrophic. Calamitous. The instructor stepped out from a back room, with his dark hair and his self deprecating demeanour, and said “Good evening ladies,” and then, catching Betty’s eye, grinned widely and said, “Well hello Ms C.” The fact that the instructor was bike guy led Betty to fear her life had made a dramatic genre swerve and was now a sex comedy instead of a legal procedural, Risky Business instead of A Few Good Men. She had already been blushing, she had nowhere left to go on the embarrassment scale, and all the other women were looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and envy, suspecting her of being their hot teacher’s pet._ _

__V raised a perfect eyebrow in enquiry at her and she hissed “Bike dude,” under her breath._ _

__She whistled softly and whispered, “The universe has a plan for you, my darling, and it will be heeded.”_ _

__“Nonsense. It’s just a stupid, meaningless, embarrassing coincidence. God, what a nightmare. Can we just go?”_ _

__“No sweetie. I’m so here for this. The drama, the romance, the hours of literary foreplay before you bang, the sonnets he’ll write you afterwards. I’ve got chills, honestly.” Betty glared at her supposed friend, swigged some wine and stared at her notebook as hot bike guy introduced himself._ _

__“So, hi everyone. Thanks for being here. I’m Jughead Jones. I’m a writer. My novel “Heel Turn” comes out in hardback next month. I encourage you all to pick up a copy, several copies if you like. There are coupons on the table just over here for a dollar off the cover price when you buy from an independent bookstore like this one. Positive reviews are a writer’s bread and butter so please be kind. I’d really like to quit being a bike messenger, no offence to my client base.” He gave a mock salute in Betty’s direction at that. “But that’s enough self promotion. Tonight we’re here to write about sex and intimacy and love and romance, not necessarily in that order. I like to start these workshops by talking about why erotica goes wrong.”_ _

__He passed around sheets with a series of quotations without attributions, and a ripple of laughter ran around the room. It reminded her of health class in high school when old Mrs Grundy had to persuade condoms onto a variety of items from the produce aisle, Ginger Lopez, her eyes wide with mock innocence, saying over and over again that she just didn’t think she’d quite got the idea and could the old lady demonstrate with something more bulbous or curvier or less anatomically likely. She became aware of Veronica shaking with laughter beside her and she looked at the quotation that she was indicating with a long purple fingernail._ _

__“Your 'bobo' is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more,” she read and spluttered rosé over the page. She became aware of Jones behind her and looked up at him._ _

__“Oh yes, that’s one of my favourites,” he smiled. “It’s a scene where an octopus is going down on a woman. I mean, you do you and all but I’m not sure the rule of three on the word suck is all that helpful, surely you’d want to add some tender, stroking tentacle action there, use ‘em if you have them, right? I mean eight digits all able to work independently, endless possibilities. All that sucking must be like having cunnilingus performed by a plunger.”_ _

__He moved away and Veronica looked at Betty with wide eyes. “Get you a man who wishes he had tentacles. Betty you are not going to let this guy get away.” Betty ignored her, trying to hear what he was saying to the women at the next table._ _

__They were laughing at a passage that included “sucking and slurping with the same lazy persistence you’d use on a gobstopper,” and he was encouraging them to speculate on why it didn’t work. “Gobstopper is a problem isn’t it? That assonance on the short o sounds like she’s gagging, especially with the plosives so close to it. If she’s generous enough to get her mouth around it, he should be eternally grateful. Don’t choke her you asshole. I mean unless she’s into that obviously but she can’t be giving enthusiastic consent with her throat full of cock.” The women nodded vigorously but she could see them conjuring mental images to accompany his commentary. Betty felt a wave of rage at their wide eyes and diligent underlining on their sheets and she trembled when he said ‘cock.’_ _

__There was a Phillip Roth scene she recognised where a woman licked maple syrup from a man’s balls which had special humour for a girl like her from a maple town. The original sticky maple. The rosé flowed and the sisterhood laughed at writers who seemed to think a woman’s vagina could develop independent sentience and hold a man in some kind of pneumatic death grip. Eventually the hysteria ebbed and Jones asked for their attention._ _

__“So I’m not trying to disrespect these writers, there are some great authors represented on these pages, I mean not the ‘vaginal ratchet’ guys but some of the others. What I’m saying is that these are not erotic scenes. It’s not erotic to describe a woman’s orgasm as “like an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk,” or semen as “adolescent sauce.” He shuddered a little. “What do all these quotations have in common, other than being as unsexy as the word mucus?”_ _

__Betty looked over and suggested, “All by men?”_ _

__“They are. Thanks Ms C. By men. My brothers are very often laughably poor at this shit, I’m pretty sure none of you need me to tell you that. But men can teach you something here. Being terrible doesn’t stop them. They aren’t embarrassed at all, even when they really should be. Erotica can be beautiful and poetic. But to get there, you have to put pencil to paper and try, you have to get over the shyness, the coyness. You have to put yourself out there, take risks, commit to it. It’s just like sex itself, commitment is what makes it great.” He glanced over at Betty as he said that, and then picked up his own notebook. “This is Anais Nin, “He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt,” and so is this, ‘When she closed her eyes she felt he had many hands, which touched her everywhere, and many mouths, which passed so swiftly over her, and with a wolflike sharpness, his teeth sank into her fleshiest parts.’” He read well, slowly, in a deep thoughtful, expressive voice. Betty found that she wanted to put her mouth over his, swallow the words as he spoke them, She shivered a little and V beamed at her knowingly. “And here’s Arundhati Roy, “The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.” So women write gorgeous erotica and this workshop is all kind of a scam because I’ve learned more about writing about sex from the women who come to these things than I’ve ever taught anyone. Tell me what works for you, let’s share what’s arousing.” He’d glanced at Betty and raised a fine dark eyebrow at her as he said that. When he looked away she rested her head on her folded arms for a second and V had to prod her. “Afterwards I’ll read you a poem that I find really sexy that was actually written by a man,” he smiled._ _

__They talked and laughed and shared quotations and jokes. They talked about words that sound sexy and words that chill the blood and kill the mood. Sibilance is sexy, rolling r’s and murmuring m’s, but too many hard c’s, not so much, which is unfortunate when so much of the vocabulary starts with the sound. They talked about biological terminology. Could there ever be a place for a testicle? Was a ball any better? Had anyone ever said perineum without a shudder? Was there a sweet spot somewhere between rosebud and anus? They discussed trembling, juddering, spasming, fluttering, quivering and spurting and when at the different stages of coitus each might be most acceptable. That led on to a long conversation about whether women want to read about fellatio. Some of the women said they didn’t, just as they didn’t want to read about vacuuming and other domestic chores that you got through so you could relax in a hot bath with a glass of Pinot. Betty disagreed and spoke a little about power and vulnerability in sex, about the rush that could be experienced when a man was entirely at a woman’s mercy, naked and desperate, moaning and begging. When she stopped speaking she became aware that their instructor was pale, a little sweaty and gripping a chair back as if it were a life raft in a stormy ocean. She allowed herself a tiny smirk. He cleared his throat, said “Quite, yes. Interesting. Ok so let’s do some writing. Here are a couple of plot scenarios just to get you started but if you have an idea of your own, please be creative. We’ll critique in thirty minutes.” He handed round cards with narrative suggestions, the couple on a romantic trip to Paris, the housewife and the pool guy, the travellers at the airport lounge, the husband and wife role playing as strangers in the hotel bar._ _

__Betty ignored them and wrote her own set-up. “He placed his bike helmet next to the boxes of ballpoint pens and pushed her back against the shelves. His lips were on her neck, alternating his gentle kisses with sucking her flesh against his teeth, so that when she returned to her desk she’d have to rearrange her hair to hide the mark. She liked that, liked the possessiveness, despite her protestations to the contrary. He made her want to disregard all of her rules, tear down the careful structures upon which she had built her life, he made her want to be reckless. She had her fingers against his belly, warm and taut. She reached down and popped the button of his fly to touch him, taking him in her hand, already hard, already yearning for her and she felt how his desire was communicating itself to her, feeling her pulse pounding in her throat and between her legs. She dropped to her knees in front of him and he groaned and quivered in anticipation of her hot mouth on him. She took the position of the supplicant and yet he was the one who muttered soft entreaties, “Please,” he whispered as she licked her lips…” She was aware of him reading over her shoulder and looked around with a raised eyebrow._ _

__He cleared his throat again and drew in an uneven breath. “Then what?” he whispered._ _

__She smiled mischeviously and wrote a rapid sentence. “Then her boss came into the supply closet and caught them and she got fired. Fin.”_ _

__He laughed, a little frantically. “What if she was the boss Ms C?”_ _

__“Oh I think she’s definitely the boss, don’t you?” she replied smugly._ _

__He muttered something under his breath and walked to the next table, not having even glanced at Veronica’s much crossed through and doodled page. Her friend leaned back in her chair and muttered, “I’m hot just from the reflected tension. Tell me you’re going to have this man Bettykins.”_ _

__“I think I may be able to write him into bed,” Betty replied with a wink._ _

__He asked for volunteers to read their work and offered fulsome praise and one or two constructive pieces of advice to each writer. Neither Betty nor Veronica volunteered. As the evening drew to a close he reached again for his notebook and said, “I promised you a poem didn’t I?” Betty raised her hand. “Yes Ms C?”_ _

__“Aren’t you going to read something that you’ve written? I mean we’ve all been showing you ours, shouldn’t you show us yours too?” He looked at her and shook his head, chuckling._ _

__“Do you want me to?” he asked, a little bashful, and the women hooted and catcalled, the rosé bottles empty now and their contents fuelling a slightly raucous mood._ _

__“Ok, let’s see. Oh ok. Here’s something I was working on earlier this week. It’s about holding hands. I’d been turned down by a woman I’d asked on a date. Crushing.” He grinned and flipped through the pages of his notebook and then folded back the cover and began to read. ‘“She sat opposite him in the dim restaurant, her radiant skin, her scintillating eyes, outshining the glimmer of the candlelight. He wanted to touch her, to hold her to him, to grasp and possess her entirely but he understood that to do so would extinguish that light. He understood that he must allow her radiance to wash over him, to bathe him, to treasure what she shared with him and not to seize more until she chose to take the sparks that hung in the crackling air between them and kindle them into tongues of flame. He reached out and took her narrow wrist between his fingers and stroked his thumb over her palm. He traced a circle, around and around, picturing that same thumb running over her perfect lips, their soft plumpness swelling against the pad, opening to him and taking his thumb into the soft, hot sweetness of her mouth. Her tongue would stroke against him, muscular and wet. He gasped at the thought and massaged her palm more firmly, picturing that motion over the swell of her breast, his thumb rubbing over her nipple as it contracted to a tight peak with the pressure of his touch. To imagine her body responding to him, being changed by his stroking was thrilling. He would caress her in every way she might be touched and make a study of the changes that he could bring about, study every gasp, every shudder, every contraction and dilation.’ That’s as far as I got.” He allowed himself a grin as the audience applauded and she heard a few appreciative mutterings as well as expressions of disbelief that any woman had been so foolish as to reject his advances. She found that she agreed with the sentiment._ _

__He finished by reading them a poem by ee cummings_ _

__“I like my body when it is with your  
body. It is so quite new a thing.  
Muscles better and nerves more.  
i like your body. i like what it does,  
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine  
of your body and its bones,and the trembling  
-firm-smooth ness and which i will  
again and again and again  
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,  
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz  
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes  
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,_ _

__and possibly i like the thrill_ _

__of under me you so quite new”_ _

__and the women gathered their belongings and clutched their notebooks to their heaving bosoms and began to head out into the night. He walked over to their table but he didn’t address Betty as she had expected. “It’s Veronica isn’t it?” he asked._ _

__V nodded, a little surprised. “Archie told me to look out for a beautiful brunette. He’s actually coming to help me pack up. He’d never forgive me if I didn’t ask if you’d like to come get a drink with us.” He turned to Betty, “I guess that’d be too date adjacent for you Ms C. But you’re welcome of course.”_ _

__Betty reached forward and took his hand, running her thumb over his palm. “I think I might be ready for date adjacent,” she smiled._ _

__It took three months to get from date adjacent to his bed, but every step brought its own exhilarating thrills. The weekend after Valentine's Day they had been eating at a cosy neighbourhood Italian place when she asked if he could only write about sex and not actually do the deed. “We can leave and go do it now if you like, or the bathrooms here are pretty nice,” he said, stormy eyes challenging her over bruschetta._ _

__She stared at him in shock. “The bathroom?” She’d been imagining that there would be a sense of occasion._ _

__“If you’re that eager I mean. Personally I’m enjoying the anticipation. We won’t ever get that back. When we’re old and grey and arthritic I’ll be able to say, ‘Remember before we did it, how we longed for each other, how we could barely get through the days with thinking about each other, remember the first time I slid my hand into your bra and stroked your breast and pinched your nipple, remember? And you will remember and you’ll squirm in your recliner because I’ll still be able to turn you on. Or we can have a forgettable, disposable hookup in a restaurant bathroom. One and done.”_ _

__She breathed heavily for a moment, both at the erotic suggestion and at his thought that they’d know each other so far into the future. It felt vertiginous. Then she realised that that was the game, to stand on those dizzying heights and dare each other to look down. She wanted to play too. She brought her eyes back to his, the blue grey, intense and hungry. “I’ll say, remember the time we made out in an uber on the way back to my place from a restaurant, remember how I kissed your neck and put my hand in the pocket of your pants and you were so hard for me and you groaned and sighed and I whispered how much I longed to feel you move inside me?”_ _

__He closed his eyes, wrestling for control for a moment, then opened them and murmured, “I’ve created a monster.”_ _

__

__By May he was driving her quietly insane. He was wringing the sensual thrill from each new experience. He’d run the tips of his fingers along her jaw and look into her eyes and the soft gesture became a promise, a symbol of other soft touches to come. It would make her imagine standing naked before him, his fingers trailing lazily over her hip, her waist, the side of her breast. In a bar he’d casually wind her hair around his wrist while he was chatting to Kevin, breaking off to turn and glance at her with a dominating challenge that made every inch of her skin fizz and crackle. His restraint made every sensation electric._ _

__On the day he was due to fly home from readings on the west coast, she was so distracted that she'd gone to the office in odd shoes. V lent her a town car so that she could get him from airport to bed in short order. Having been making the beast with two backs with Archie the musician for months, she was endlessly amused by Betty’s predicament. “What’s the issue B? Disfunction? Is he deformed....down there?”_ _

__“No, it’s a seduction V. He takes it seriously. He likes the dance. And, weirdly, with him, so do I,” Betty shrugged, nonplussed to be finding these new and unanticipated vistas in her own sexuality._ _

__She’d picked him up at the terminal and they’d travelled to his apartment, sitting a little further apart than usual, aware that the tension between them was palpable and that once it was broken it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. Once they were through the door he threw his bag against the wall and took her in his arms, nipping at the skin under her ear in the way that he’d learned made her back arch and her fingers clench in his hair. He chuckled against her flesh and shock waves travelled through her body. She reached out and grabbed his shirt, twisting the fabric in her fist, pulling him nearer. “Enough playing, Jug.”_ _

__“I’m not playing Betts. I haven’t been playing for a long time,” he said and tore his shirt off over his head and then fell to the buttons on hers. She exhaled a long sigh, relief and anticipation mingled, as she shrugged the fabric off her shoulders and allowed herself to respond to his body, his olive skin, the scar on his bicep, the dark hair stretching from navel to waistband, the groove in the muscle on either side of his belly. She pulled the straps of her bra from her shoulders and he stroked her breasts with trembling fingertips, they’d been here before but this was different, she knew him well enough now to see that he wasn’t holding back, he was allowing his passion full rein and she relaxed into her own, trusting him with her pleasure as she’d never been able to trust a man before. It was different to be made a gift of it and to want to reciprocate to the fullest extent of her power. There was no need to fight for what she wanted, his soft exclamations made her quiver, his touches fulfilled his desire as it met hers. In his bed he whispered praise as he kissed her, he lay back in abandonment as she explored him with her mouth, eyes soft and half closed as he centred himself on her touches, she felt his sinews stiffening under her kisses and touches, his body coiling against itself until the release washed over him in rippling waves of pleasure. When he dragged her to the edge of the bed to kneel before her and kiss her legs in dancing patterns from ankle to knee to thigh she felt close to tears at the reverence he paid her. Then he was stroking and kissing her and she forgot everything, forgot where she was, lost any conception of how he was bringing her the sensations, simply floated on it, drifting in an ocean of rapture. If she hadn’t trusted and cared for him, if she hadn’t understood his happiness at her moans and exclamations she would have been directing him, holding his head, insisting. As it was she let him explore and was surprised by each unexpected way he could please her. They slept a little, they drank water, ate fruit, the juice dripping across naked skin to be chased by eager tongues, fingers sucked clean with no regard for whose fingers, whose mouth. They talked in low voices about his trip, her work, how happy they each were to be exactly where they were. His laughter reverberated against her cheek where it lay on his chest. At some quiet hour, in the soft, companionable dimness, she stroked him until he was hard and whimpering, then kissed him again and again as she lowered herself over him. He whispered that she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen, that he’d never stop writing about the wonder of her, that he wanted her to use his body, make it her own. After she came she helped him to turn them over so he could thrust into her with long, thrilling strokes that had him crying out as he found his own fulfilment._ _

__The following February she and V agreed that Galentine’s Day had run its course. Archie was planning some grand gesture with roses and balloons and she had no doubt that her own boyfriend would come up with some kind of romantic gesture even though the big day fell on a Monday this year and they’d spent the weekend in a bed and breakfast in Vermont which had been exhausting even though they hadn’t left the room.__

____

____

__She was in the office, working through a complex set of hypothetical adulteries and betrayals for a prenup when Kev called back to her that the bike courier was waiting. “But it’s not due for another three days,” she protested, standing from her desk. He was there with a hopeful expression and a fleshy, sinuous orchid in a pot while Kev ostentatiously shuffled papers to give them a moment of privacy._ _

__“Hey boss lady, I thought maybe you’d buy me a coffee,” he grinned. She laughed and grabbed her jacket, kissing his cheek and telling Kev to hold the fort._ _

__Two minutes later he was pinning her against the stationery shelves, his elbow resting above her head as he kissed her. Something hard in his jacket pocket pressed against her breast and she patted it and joked, “Wow you must be really pleased to see me.” She reached in to find that he was carrying a screwdriver. She fished it out with a quizzical expression and he laughed when she said, “Is this a metaphor or a Valentine's gift?”_ _

__He stood aside and looked towards the door. “I made some minor improvements to your working environment,” he said, reaching back and sliding the bolt on a newly fitted lock before turning back to unbutton her blouse._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t made up any of the examples of terrible erotica that Jug uses in his workshop. No, really, not even 'vaginal ratchet.' I won’t list the sources because I’m being a little mean about some really great writers but I think I give you enough to track them down if you want to read nasty sex scenes. (Not nasty in a good way either)


End file.
